Christmas Time in South Park

A dose of holiday hilarity!

Pretty much every show on TV does a Holiday special each winter, but since Mr. Hankey first said "Howdy Ho" in season one, South Park is inarguably one of the best. Christmas Time in South Park consists of seven episodes from throughout the series, assembled here in chronological order.

The episodes included here are as follows:

Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo - from season 1. The original South Park Christmas special is when the gang discovered Kyle doesn't celebrate Christmas, and that he believes in Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo. This ep is notable as well for the non-offensive, minimalist holiday program, and one of Cartman's best original songs, "Kyle's mom's a b*tch."

Merry Christmas, Charlie Manson - from season 2. The title really says it all here; Kyle, Stan, and Kenny go visit the extended Cartman family with Cartman and his mom. When Cartman's uncle escapes from prison for the holidays, he brings home his prison cellmate - Charles Manson.

Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics - from season 3. When Mr. Hankey introduces 10 musical segments, it could be a disjoined or recap type of episode, but it is as funny as any other. If you've never heard the classic Santa versus Jesus duet/sing-off, you really need to. Now. And the dreidel song is classic, too - you know the one, with Courteney Cox in the lyrics.

A Very Crappy Christmas - from season 4. When Mr. Hankey doesn't appear for Christmas, the boys go looking for him. They find him living in the sewers with his wife (who has silicorn breasts) and their three nugget children. The boys need to help find the Christmas Spirit and save Christmas, by making their own Christmas special.

Red Sleigh Down - from season 6. To save himself from the naughty list, Cartman concocts a plan to bring Christmas to Iraq. With the help of his friends and Mr. Hankey, he heads to the North Pole. Things go awry in Iraq, including Santa being shot down, and Jesus comes to his aide. Also in a cameo appearance, Cartman's naughty and nice accountant is Kyle's cousin, Kyle.

It's Christmas in Canada - from season 7. In a twisted Oz parody, the boys travel across Canada in a quest to retrieve Kyle's baby brother Ike. Ike had been reclaimed by his birth parents, and it would take a Christmas miracle to get him back. Also, Saddam Hussein was captured (only days before this episode originally aired) which makes for a great "Ding, dong, they caught Saddam" song.

Woodland Critter Christmas - from season 8. By far, this has to be the creepiest of all the Christmas specials. Stan is coerced into helping some fuzzy friends into protecting them, since the porcupine is pregnant with their Lord's child. He obliges them, until eventually too much is revealed about who their Lord really is. It's nice to see these critters in their disturbing origins, after they appeared in the Imaginationland trilogy this fall.

All of these episodes are already released with their full season. One of the downfalls of releasing a compilation like this while the show is still running, is that at some point it will probably not be a complete set of Christmas episodes. Basically, if South Park does another Christmas special (which is hasn't for the past three seasons), it will be outdated. Maybe they'll eventually need to do a sequel, like The Simpsons did with the release of their Christmas specials.